


All Wounds

by annaslastdalliance



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Mischaracterization, Personal Saito! canon, Saito just has a lot of feelings, Spoilers, nothing happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 08:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annaslastdalliance/pseuds/annaslastdalliance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time heals all wounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the prompt: _"Robert/Saito. Established relationship. Saito treating Robert like the pretty little thing he is. I can imagine Saito being just completely devoted to him."_ over on one of the Inception kink memes in like, 2010. Yeah, this is old. 
> 
> Deviations: not established relationship (uhgr, I am the worst); not kinky (also the worst).

They see each other again for the first time after the inception at some corporate function, booted and suited to the neck on opposite ends of the room. Fischer looks tired, standing by the window with eyes that are meticulously vacant, and his face does not change when their gazes collide. After a minute, Saito picks up his champagne glass and crosses the room to him.

“Mr. Fischer,” Saito greets, inclining his head in respect as Fischer stands mute and rigid before him. “What a pleasant surprise. What business could you possibly have with this gathering of amateurs?”

The word business makes Fischer jerk into motion, giving Saito a thin lipped smile over the rim of his own champagne glass before swallowing its contents with a slight grimace.

“Who says I’m here doing business, Mr…?”

“Saito,” Saito offers politely, and smiles when Fischer reacts at the name. “I see you’ve heard of me. I was a great admirer of your father’s business. I’ve also come to admire yours, young though it is.”

“Thank you,” Fischer answers, but it is anything but gracious. “Although I’m not sure why you would call yourself an admirer of my father's, Mr. Saito. His preferred term for you was ‘competitor’.”

This time Saito does laugh. “An admiring competitor, Mr. Fischer! Truly, I was sorry to hear of his passing. You have my condolences.”

“Thank you,” Fischer repeats, and there is no longer any veneer of politeness around the words. The death of Fischer Senior, though some time past, has left Fischer Junior with two great holes where his eyes used to be, and the reminder is unwelcome. “Now is there anything I can help you with, Mr. Saito? Directions, perhaps?”

“Nothing quite so simple, I’m afraid. In fact, I have a business proposal for you.”

“Yes?” Fischer is paying better attention now, but if anything, it makes his expression even blanker, caged-off with wariness.

“I would like—” For a moment, Saito hesitates; wishes he could take another look inside the mind of the man before him. This is a Robert Fischer who loves his father and believes his father loved him, so why are his eyes still dark with sleeplessness? Perhaps the inception has made him feel his loss more acutely, or perhaps he simply feels what Saito believes men of his intellect and ambition are always doomed to feel: haughty, and lonely. “I would like a professional partnership.”

“I see.” Fischer sets down his glass on the long table behind him, where the pattern of the tablecloth seems to distract him, because he doesn’t look up for a long moment. “And maybe you’d like to explain why you think I’d trust you, exactly?”

“You’ll come to see why in time, Mr. Fischer.”

“Time?” Fischer’s gaze has been redirected; his eyes dart around Saito’s face as though attempting to read facial muscles.

“Time…changes many things,” Saito explains, softly. “Heals all wounds. You find that emotions…dilute. Anger and jealousy dissolve. The things that seem important diminish, become trivial. One realizes that one has lived life wrongly, somehow, but this is not without its benefits. After all, in good business, mistakes are identified in order to avoid their repetition.”

Fischer makes that face again, distracted and haughty, with eyes as far-seeing as ever. Saito, thankfully, no longer finds it infuriating: even after the inception, Robert Fischer has kept the habit of looking through everyone he comes into contact with. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing, Mr. Fischer.” Then Saito corrects himself. “A dream I had. A dream within a dream. You and I worked together, and it was better than I could have imagined.”

Fischer smiles, once, briefly. “You’d base a business decision on a dream you had?”

“I have made far more foolish business decisions than this one, Mr. Fischer, based on far more trivial things.” Such as fear, Saito almost adds, but takes another sip of his drink instead. The irony of the situation doesn’t escape him: decades endured dreaming in order to convince Fischer to dissolve his father’s company only to wake and witness him rise to an even bigger threat in his own right. These days, however, such situational comedy makes Saito smile, not curse and hire glorified conmen: time changes many things, indeed, but Robert Fischer still looks past him.

“Think on it,” Saito suggests finally into Fischer’s silence. “My offer stands, permanently. I do not ask for your trust, Mr. Fischer; not immediately. Only the opportunity and time in which to gain it.”

Fischer nods, but it is dismissive, not affirmative. His eyes return to the window and abruptly, he is gone again, past the skyscraper’s wall of windows and somewhere far, far away from stock portfolios and artificial lighting. Dreaming.

_I am a young man again_ , Saito thinks, carefully, watching him. _Young men can wait._

 

 

It is seven months before Robert Fischer lets down his guard and so much as mentions anything business-related to Saito, but it is well worth the wait. Although seven months is not too long—Saito has run longer cons than this—he finds himself grateful that Fischer Junior is less paranoid than his father.

After this concession, the others come quicker: two months into talking, they begin to do business together, and although Robert’s eyes still slip past him onto the wall behind, he smiles more than once over the course of their interviews. It is not quite as Saito dreamed, not yet; not quite what he imagined for his second chance when he was eighty years old and full of regret, all ruthlessness leeched from him like poison from a wound and leaving nothing behind but a longing to set back the clocks, but Saito is still young, and there is still time.

 

 

One day, the dream becomes reality. After that, they work together so often and so easily Saito almost forgets to notice, to pay attention. Robert Fischer looks from paperwork to Saito’s expression to paperwork again, and his gaze no longer bounces off walls, looking for an escape. His mind is here, in Saito’s office, as he ruffles a hand at the nape of his neck; works late; wishes Saito goodnight with an unthinking smile. Perhaps this is the place his mind wanders to now when he is elsewhere, when he has to sit through Power Point presentations pretending he cares or while he lies in bed, waiting for sleep.

Saito wonders what this has changed, all of this. The company is flourishing, quietly, as is Robert’s, but it will never reach the heights he remembers from his dream life. After much thought, Saito has realized he is alright with this: the days are still long, but this version of them feels slightly less empty. He wonders if, despite this, he will still end up old and full of regret. He doesn’t think so, but he’s content to wait and find out for himself.

 

 

They are in another of the city’s skyscrapers, debating numbers in the fourth floor boardroom, when Saito decides he’s had enough of waiting and comes around the conference table to kneel by Robert’s chair. He’s not sure, at the time, what he intends the gesture to convey, but it feels right in the back of his head; respectful and dignified, and easier than trying to explain what, exactly, Robert Fischer has come to mean for him, or how good it feels to do right by him this second time around, and see him achieve all that Saito has spent lifetimes taking from him.

“Saito,” Robert says, softly, confused, into the gathering silence. His eyes are everywhere again, searching for answers in the layout of Saito’s face.

“Sit back,” Saito answers, easing Robert gently back into his office chair by the shoulders. The expression of confusion doesn’t leave his face, but when Saito starts planting little kisses along the side of his neck, Robert clears his throat and moves his head sharply around to face him.

“This…probably isn’t appropriate,” he says, softly, and Saito smiles.

“No, probably not.” He leans in and kisses Robert carefully, hoping his stubble is soft against the smoothness of the other man’s mouth. “Will that be a problem?”

“No,” Robert mutters, sideways, and then, more forcefully, “No.”

His eyes aren’t blank anymore, just blue, and he smiles cautiously under Saito’s scrutiny. Hope, embarrassment: things Robert Fischer has not felt very often that well-suit the delicate slopes of his face. All this, evoked by a scene he has never played out before, one of the few he has not already lived one hundred times, not like waiting in his father’s office or in a meeting room or for his PDA to ring; not like waiting for the world to pass quietly, without touching him. No, this Robert Fischer is wide awake, and when he ducks his head forwards to kiss Saito’s mouth, it is better than any dream.


End file.
